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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Fearless Females - Newsmakers

March 14 — Newsmakers? Did you have a female ancestor who made the news?
Why? Was she famous or notorious? Did she appear in the social column?

When I first answered this prompt in 2011, I didn't know of any female newsmakers in the family. Since then, I've discovered a few fun items from the 1930s and 1940s in the Chester Times, Pennsylvania social column featuring my mother and her sisters. The article below is about a weiner roast my mother attended. It must have been a slow news day!

An earlier article was about a party my grandparents gave my mother for her
seventh birthday and it listed 23 guests. The biggest surprise was an article about my mother and two of her sisters being admitted to the Sacred Heart hospital. My mother said they had their tonsils out at the same time. I've shared many experiences with my sister, but I'm glad that wasn't one of them!

I haven't found any female newsmakers on my father's side, probably since the paper where he grew up has not been digitized. When I answered this prompt in 2011, I was on the lookout for
Siobhan Creedon Lankford's book, The Hope and the Sadness even though she is not directly related to my Creeden family. Her memoir recounts her childhood growing up on a small farm in County Cork, Ireland, as well as her activities during the fight for Ireland's independence. She was born in 1894, so I was especially interested in her stories about her Creedon family in rural Ireland. I
just recently obtained a copy from a used book seller. The book starts
with the story of her father Patrick Creedon's arrest for ploughing his
farm after being evicted and his escape from the police, so it looks like an interesting read!

Once again, in honor of National Women’s History Month, Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist blog presents Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.